Welcome to this weeks development diary for A House Divided. This time we are going to talk about quite a number of things, but the common theme is military improvements.

Rally PointsAs some of you might have noticed there are some interesting looking new icons in the province view and whoever guessed on a rally point system was correct. You can now mark any province you have access to (not just your own but say the front on allied territory) as a rally point. Newly constructed units will head to their closest rally point and merge with the army there automatically (up to supply limit size). The merging is togglable if you prefer to organize yourself but defaults to on. You can keep on top of your rally points in the outliner and there is also an updated recruitment map mode which will highlight rally points and indicate where units under construction will head once done.

Leader PrestigeLeaders can now gain prestige though successful battles (and lose it if things go pear shaped). A prestigious and experienced leader will get more out of his troops resulting in a morale and organization bonuses. Prestige will also help us stop the current exploit of being able to move your best leader before every new battle. Removing a leader with high prestige from command without reassigning to a new army at his current location will incur a penalty on your countries prestige, meaning its not something you want to be doing very often. For modders out there, starting prestige is scriptable so famous generals can start with an advantage and armies can now also be scripted with their historically correct leaders.

New SpritesWe are adding some new sprite types to the game so armies will look different depending on their composition. Tanks aren’t quite ready to be shown yet, but here is a picture of a mounted cavalryman being worked on:

Late Game ImprovementsIn the late 1800s things can start to slow down when working with large number of units so we have had a look at improving both the usability of things and performance.Units in the construction screen are grouped by continent and type with summary headers (see screenshot below). These lets you queue up all those units for construction with a single click. The list of current constructions also has a button for canceling all active in case of some economic collapse or early end of a war.When reorganizing units there is a quick shortcut button that will balance out your units for you in an even split.All unit lists have been rewritten to give a massive boost in performance (includes reorganization windows) and will no longer be a chore to use with many units.

I hope this wet your appetite for A House Divided. Next week we will talk about investing in foreign countries and changes to the market system for spheres.

The topic for today is Foreign Investment. In the Victorian era, as well as today, diplomatic and economic influence often go hand in hand and we wanted to capture this, as well as giving some empire building role-playing for the end game. So how does it work then?

We have added a new tab under production where you can get an overview of investments and can build factories in other countries (that have governments that allow it). The diplomatic overview for a country now also show who the investors are. Railroads and factories can also be built from the province interface on foreign provinces. Capitalists are also allowed to do investments if they have spare cash. A country's economic policy controls if you are allowed to do foreign investments, as well as if you allow them to be performed. You also need to be a Great Power to be able to do this.

So why would you want to give away your money? Having investments in another country gives you two benefits. First of all it works to slow down other countries influence gain and keep your sphere safer from tampering (this works the other way as well, you can start off with some investment to get an edge versus someone else in the race to put someone in your sphere). Secondly it decides how much of their market you get control over. The way it used to work in Victoria II was that everything on your market would be under the control of your sphere master. Now this only true for uncivilized countries (with some modifications, see future diary on unciv changes). Civilized nations let you control 75% of their market and second rank powers only 50%. The rest of the market control is dependent on investments, so if say you funded half of a second rank countries industry you can grab 75% of it, without investments you would only get 50%. The country's own industries count for this as well, so building up some industry and infrastructure will help you stay independent easier and keep you from being exploited.

To support this we have also added some more cool things. You will now be able to sever ties with a country and kick them out of your sphere (this will cost some infamy and prestige however) and non-great powers all get a new decision "Nationalize" where they basically grab all invested industry in their nation for themselves. Since this might be frowned upon it will also give a CB for the investors to puppet you, so make sure you can hold your own before doing this (or expect your previous partners to be very busy for a while).

Next week we will be talking about popular movements and changes to the the rebel system. There might also be some cool pictures of tanks.